It's funny how events, movies, songs, TV shows, and so on from our childhood can plant themselves in the back of our memories for years, then pop up fresh in our minds as if we'd just experienced them yesterday. Take this chopper built by Joe Martin and his Martin Bros. crew, for example. "The inspiration for this bike came from memories I had of old cartoons with big burly guys riding these big choppers. It was like everything on those bikes was exaggerated-long, stretched-out frames with the frontend sticking way out there and monster wheels," Joe told us.
This bike wasn't built for a customer, nor was it built with some ridiculous 12-hour deadline for a competition. Instead, Joe designed and built this bike to his own specs for his own satisfaction. Joe said, "I like to try and bring at least one new bike whenever I go to major shows. And with the Republic of Texas (ROT) Rally in Austin only eight weeks away, I decided I would debut this bike there. I always try set some money aside so I can build at least three bikes a year that are my own personal projects, not projects I was paid to do. I give myself a budget for each bike and then hammer away. These projects allow me to build bikes I would want."
Sure, the customer projects are cool (and they pay the bills), but as any business owner will tell you, they can also be a pain. In the world of bike building, it never fails that toward the end of a project the customer will change his mind about something or see some new wheels in one of the magazines and want them on his bike. This constant flip-flopping of ideas can be a big turn-off for any custom builder. And that's why Joe enjoys building his personal projects the most-besides, it gives him the opportunity work out all of the ideas that pop into his head.
As with most custom bike builders, whenever Joe is working on one project, it never seems to fail that an idea for another project will materialize. And while it might take a few months to get around to it, that new idea won't leave his thoughts until it's pounded out in metal. "Once the design for this bike came to me, I just kept flashing back to those old cartoons I used to see. I wanted it to have an old-meets-new hot rod look, and once that decision was made, I knew I had to knock this bike out," said Joe.
This latest creation, dubbed "the Barbwire Hardtail" by the guys in the shop, may be an exaggeration in design, but it's no cartoon. This is the real thing: a stretched and raked-out hot rod chopper with plenty of round chrome real estate from Performance Machine at either end.
As with most of his projects, whether they're for himself or a customer, Joe and his team started by building a custom frame. With the intention of building a low, stretched hardtail with a dropped seating position, a frame jig was set up, and then the sparks began to fly. First, a long, arched backbone was created, and then it was joined together with the lower framerails. At the tail end of the backbone a lipped seat-pan area was grafted in place so it would sit suspended just above the oil bag and inches away from the 300mm Metzeler rear tire. Rather than just welding up a rear section that would "do the job," Joe decided to dress it up by giving it a razor-sharp barbed-wire look.
"My idea was to incorporate the oil tank into the rear of the bike so it would be out of sight. I also wanted to hide the brake caliper as much as possible, keeping the rear clean but still interesting," Joe stated. "Making it look good is the easy part. It's making it all work with the hidden axle covers and adjusters and everything else that's the hard part."
The only part of the frame that was still missing was the downtubes. And once again it was form over function, as Joe busted out posterboard and a pencil and traced out some jagged downtubes to match the rear of the bike. "The downtubes were probably the toughest part of the frame, because not only did it take some time to get the design just right, but then I had to send them out to get cut by a friend who has a water-jet machine. From there they had to go to polish, then to chrome. It was a bitch just sitting there staring at the frame in the jig and waiting for the downtubes to show up."